AtArchitecture on narratives, uplifting spaces and their search for 'beauty and meaning'

AtArchitecture may be small but it’s a studio with a big ambition. Founded in 2014 by Neha Rane and Avneesh Tiwari, with an eight-people-strong team at its base in Mumbai, the architecture practice is centred on balancing contemporary takes and tradition. Its headquarters, a 100-year-old space in the Indian port city, reflects the duo’s love of this mix of heritage and contemporary, adaptive reuse.

Meet Mumbai's AtArchitecture

‘We are constantly in search of beauty and meaning. We seek to explore the spatial aspects of architecture and its profound experiential impact. Through our building projects, we strive for deeper insights into how spaces can uplift the human spirit,’ the two founders say. ‘We value narrative over image and strive for delight, sustainability and efficiency in design. We also place great emphasis on involving local people, using their expertise and creating a building system that fits seamlessly into the context and site, striving not only for utility but also for truth in an academic sense.’

Context and regional inspiration come first when AtArchitecture starts tackling a new project. Its working methods may seem conventional – hand sketching and both paper and CAD modelling – but these architects see each of their designs as an experiment, a chance to create and offer something new to their clients, and the wider field. A social cause often emerges as a key motivation in their explorations: ‘We try to use architecture as a valuable tool to initiate a conversation between the users and the context so that a building is not an object in space. This has led to a focus on public and social interventions with expanded programmes that are developed through a participatory process and are reflected in the final form.’

Bringing the emerging Indian architecture studio to the spotlight is ‘Home within House’, one of its first realised works – an affordable housing project that aims to address the lack of safe and secure housing for over 17,000 factory workers in the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone (PPSEZ), most of whom are women. In 2018, it won the prestigious ‘Affordable Housing Design Challenge’, organised by the BTI, United Nations (UNDP Cambodia) and supported by SDG Impact Finance (UNSIF). Other significant works include the NorthEast Pavilion for Surajkund Craft Fair 2023 (hailed for its use of bamboo architecture at the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024).

Rane and Tiwari hope their profession can open doors for people in the industry and the wider community. ‘India is a country that is in the process of evolving and growing rapidly, we are faced with an unprecedented mix of extraordinary opportunities and major challenges. The fastest-growing economy in the world also has the largest vulnerable population, rapid modernisation also comes with deep-rooted traditions, urbanisation is coupled with a vast rural context and geographical and cultural conditions differ from state to state. To practise here is to acknowledge all these dichotomies and to represent, reflect and help shape them,’ they explain.

‘Most architecture in present-day India has not developed through a gradual process driven by the specificities and uniqueness of our context. Our progress has been accelerated by a sudden influx of capital, globalisation and a rapidly growing population. As a result, quick generic solutions and commercial aspects of the profession are prioritised, sometimes at the expense of quality, innovation and sustainability.’

atarchitecture.net